1. Field
The present disclosure relates to transmission of notifications, and more particularly, to methods and systems for the dynamic formation of groups in a notification system.
2. Background
Businesses and governmental entities, including municipalities and schools, are ever more reliant on communicating through the mass transmission of notifications to their staff, citizens and family members of students to keep these constituencies apprized of important events, and sometimes of emergencies. For example, a school principal might need to send a message to the parent of every child that the school will be closed the next day due to some unforeseen event such as flooding, fire, or freezing conditions. Notifications with such messages might be sent by telephones, facsimiles, pagers, electronic mail (e-mail), and/or text messages. These notifications will typically vary in their degree of importance, in the number of recipients, or in the immediacy with which they must be sent.
However, there currently exists a growing problem as mass notification transmission systems become more prevalent. In particular, the number of potential recipients capable of receiving various notifications is consistently increasing. Furthermore, it is difficult to identify the appropriate recipients for notifications since the groups of recipients are constantly changing. For example, if a notification is intended to be received by recipients living within a certain geographical area, it may be difficult to identify and select every intended recipient living in that area as people are moving into and out of an area. As another example, if a Spanish language notification is intended to be received by parents or guardians of every third grade student at a particular school who primarily speak Spanish, it would be both difficult to identify recipients that meet these criteria, and inefficient to individually select such recipients.
In such situations, intended recipients will have to be individually identified and individually selected, often amongst a large number of potential recipients. It would be desirable to select these intended recipients in a uniform and efficient manner.